YOUR LENS CAP IS ON

Thursday, October 19, 2017

My relationship with Instagram has come a long way. I used to hate it so much that the day I finally joined was the most hypocritical moment of my life. Truly. And even then, I continued to fight it. But now, I kinda really dig this ever-evolving social media platform, and here's the latest reason why:

So I was sick in bed two nights ago and just wanted to envelop myself in darkness and good music. Problem is I actually do this a lot and had become somewhat jaded with my jams. So, I decided to ask Instagram—specifically the 150-or-so users who regularly tune into my IG Stories—for a new soundtrack. I don't know why my first instinct was to request for romantic songs but in regards, I have no regrets. As promised, here is the final playlist with submissions kept anonymous (because I think that's romantic) and songs listed in the order they were submitted (to guarantee weirdness, lol). Catch the links to listen to them through on Youtube/Spotify below, and stay tuned for the next "Dear Instagram, Send Me Songs." Oh yeah, it's totally happening.

"DEAR INSTAGRAM,SEND ME ROMANTIC SONGS"

1. HIM - Disarm Me (With Your Loneliness)I could only find a remix on Spotify, sorry.2. Frank Ocean - Thinkin Bout You3. Sebadoh - Willing To Wait4. La Vie En Rose"Edith Piaf or Louis Armstrong."Personally, I'm a total sucker for the trumpet solo in the latter. 5. LANY - ILYSB"The live in Los Angeles version."I couldn't find this exact version on Spotify, but I thought the stripped version would be the closest.

Sunday, October 8, 2017

My last post was over a year ago, and in that year, I had only blogged thrice—pathetic. I've never forgotten about thisdidntfitmysuitcase or "You Lens Cap Is On" (seven years and I'm still confused about which is my blog's name), but I truly thought I was finally able to let it drift off into the Phantom Zone of the Internet. There's a lesson about love and attachment to be learned here: if you're gonna break-up, make it official. Burn the bridge. Otherwise, there's always a chance of going back.

So here I am. Not really back for good, just teasing my blast from the past. After revisiting some 20 entries for the last hour and being legitimately entertained, I am inspired to do a quick comparison of myself then and now so you can all see as well how I've tragically regressed from my once-enlightened, eloquent younger self. RIP.

Ch-ch-ch-changes:

Career. I am no longer an underpaid lifestyle writer with no work hours and hence no sense of what is work and what is play. I'm an editor now, a digital editor, for a pretty well-established English magazine in Thailand. It's a totally different ball game. Like, I actually have to be responsible. For people. And the direction of the company. NBD. At this point, there is practically no hope for me in relating to 20 year-olds, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

I have facial piercings now. Two on my nose. I think I woke up one day feeling like I missed out on one significant rite of passage in my angsty teenage years. Unexpectedly, my nose rings are fitting in, in my adult life very well and might stick around longer than I intended them to.

The Sasquatch and I have parted ways, and I have my own place now. Don't be sad. Remember, Brad and Angie also broke up last year, but we can still appreciate what was and move on. I love my new independence, and Sassy, as far as I know, is shaking things up good in Shanghai because Bangkok wasn't big enough for the both of us.

I recently made a new record of revisiting a country within the same year. And... I am about to visit Taiwan for the third time this year. Crazy. Blogging opp? Perhaps.

Saturday, August 6, 2016

Let Suicide Squad be a reminder that the opinions of professional film critics can be as shortsighted and unimportant as anyone else’s. Working in journalism, I value the cultivated perspective learned reviewers bring to the table, even when they oppose mine, but too frequently nowadays it seems like they’re just gunning to be critical and walk into theaters looking for ways to tear a film apart. I’m not such a DC fundamentalist that I would hail anything that comes from the brand. I did think that Batman V Superman was pathetic - like Now You See Me 1 & 2 pathetic - which is why I’m baffled that critics would put Suicide Squad in the same bottom class, or lower. For me, Batman V Superman and Suicide Squad were (k)night and day in terms of quality, and here's my two bahts on a few of the major criticisms:

“It’s not Marvel good.”Sure, it’s not that kind of crisp-humored, timely-paced, fatefully-optimistic superhero movie. But that’s a Marvel thing, rather than a “good” thing. DC has always been grittier, slower, and darker, and fans love them for these characteristics.

“Leto’s Joker was barely in the movie.”

Um, did you read the title of the movie? This is not a Joker or Batman movie. The fact that he was even in it was a gift from Satan.

“Leto’s Joker doesn’t live up to Heath’s / It was nothing like Heath’s”

*extended facepalm* Again, this isn’t a Batman/Joker movie, whereas Dark Knight was. But also, the two are completely different visions of the Joker, not to be compared to the other. I thought Jared Leto brought home the version he was playing, the old-school, chillingly gaunt, in-your-face HAHAHA sadist gangster version.

“Leto’s laugh is annoying.”

So a job well-done?

“The movie uses and abuses Harley Quinn”

I won’t even bother dabbling in the “this how she’s portrayed in the comics, you dumb fuck” debate here. Just let me tell ya as a feminist what SJW BS this is. They point fingers at her booty show and her private aspirations to be Joker’s wifey and baby mama. So what? Will you also speculate that DC chose her to be the insane one because she’s a woman? Why can’t a woman, especially one who beats up nonhuman glob thugs with a fucking wooden baseball bat for godsake, fall blindly in love, dream about marriage and kids, and show off her curves. Do we all gots to be stone cold, no fun Amanda Wallers?

“It was the Harley and Deadshot show.”And your point is? Imagine if all 9-10 main characters in this film got equal spotlight. Sacrifice any depth for shallow equality? I THINK NOT. We’re all in agreement that Harley and Deadshot were perfect leads, and it’s not like the rest were forgettable bitch please. For me, Ayer prioritized ideally.

Final thoughts:

Soundtrack: KILLER. / There is some HOT STUFF in the superhero film. They usually serve us short in this area, but not this time!! / Props to the entire production for keeping a lot ofbig secrets. /Biggest flaw: Enchantress. Perhaps not poorly casted - I think Delevingne is a choice that makes sense - but poorly directed in the movie. /Biggest score: an overall cast that is true to the source material. Going back to the top, this is why fans of the comics should not be phased by terrible reviews.

I leave you with a photo of my Suicide Squad Squad at the Bangkok movie premiere:

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

"I'd like to be able to tell you everything I'm thinking. But I can't." - Kate Mercer

Hand covering my lips the shape of a faded "nooo", the end credits began. Great, another film to add to my ever-growing list of shattered dreams. I should know by now that I have a wretched magnetism towards these sorts.

I'm going to keep this short and running, because this is not a movie review blog, and I'm trying not to let perfectionism keep me from making a comeback on my whatever blog, which I refuse to let die.

The character of Kate was just too real for me. I empathized so hard with her, having experienced analogous trauma - well, I'm not nearly in my sixties celebrating my 45th wedding anniversary, but I have had my own Jeff, a happy-go-lucky, foolish, it's-possible-to-move-on-from-anything Jeff, my and Kate's antithesis. In honesty, I had my hunches midway through that it was not going to end well for the characters,but a part of me was wishing that filmmakers were not like me. Not emo, and not hardcore realists. Unfortunately, I am not so unique. They also just had to make my favorite sad song the climatic soundtrack of this movie. #SmokeGetsInYourEyes #ThePlatters #heartbreaksintoamillionmorepieces #THANKS

FEEL MY PAIN

What struck me the most about how Kate's character was portrayed, and why this movie and Charlotte Rampling are deserving of gold at the upcoming, most important movie awards ceremony, were the nuances and layering of her reaction to even just an emotional existence of another woman in her husband's life. Rather than large and dramatic episodes of Kate feeling explicitly sorry for herself and angry at Jeff, you see her make all the efforts to maintain order, but ultimately succumbing to the inability to. Without making a huge scene.

Because women who are introverted, passionately loving but grudgeful perfectionists are religiously against crumbling. What you need to see, which you do in this movie, are us trying to convince ourselves to insanity not to snoop, trying to create more memorabilias of our relationship out of low confidence, knowing too much but keeping the burden locked up from anyone else, seeing "her" in everyday things we don't want near our men, mentally calculating the years we've wasted, and smiling for everyone all the while.